It’s all about the presents!
I got my CoffeeSwap III package today!
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I love the yarn colors and can’t wait to try out the two patterns Julie included - Snowflake Lace Socks by Melanie Berney and Rococo Socks by Lisa Parker. The coffee and mug will get “christened” tomorrow morning and I’m sure it will be a great way to start out a vacation day! “Knit’s End” is just too funny - I was in Barnes & Noble just this afternoon and picked it up off the display, but then put it back since we were in a rush and I didn’t want to have to go through the check out. What a treat to come home and find if on my doorstep!
Thanks so much Julie!
And since I’m posting, here’s a shot of the finished Charade socks:
.. and the beginning of the DNA scarf I’m knitting for a friend:
I’m actually knitting two DNA scarves in the round so that the scarf is both thicker and reversible, which is why it looks a little off-kilter in the photo. The yarn she decided on is KnitPicks Swish DK and it’s very knitting up very soft, though it’s occasionally a little splitty on the cables.
I *won*!
*squee!* I won a contest over at the Coffeeswap blog for posting about trying a new kind of coffee! I’ve been somewhat lax about keeping up with the group blog because things have been a bit busy lately, but I wanted to read about all the different kinds of coffee folks were trying and then had an opportunity to try a new one myself yesterday and managed to get my submission in just under the wire. Yea! This definitely made my Monday morning better!
And while I’m on the subject.. I have the pieces for Jules‘ package mostly all planned out (though I’m waiting to receive some of them still) with just a few more fun bits to pick up, hopefully this weekend. It’s been a fun swap to participate in and a *great* excuse for me to seek out and find a few new things for me, too!
Confessions
I haven’t been knitting as much as I pr’bly should have this week. The shawl is 75% finished, but I’d hoped to be closer to 90% finished by today. I’ll knit some on it this afternoon and evening, and it will still be finished in time, so I’m not really that worried about it. I just.. didn’t feel like knitting much during the evenings this week and I drove in more often than usual because Jack was sick for several days (usually we carpool and I can knit in the car).
I have had fun acquiring bits and pieces for my Coffee Swap III pal, Jules, though. I hope she likes what I’ve picked out for her, and I hope that it all arrives in time to get it out to her in the mail on time!
Not dead (yet?)
It’s been.. well.. if life is what happens when you’re not paying attention, I’m not sure what it’s been lately. Busy. (Hrm.. I thought I posted this last night.. guess not..)
I have been knitting - the first Charade sock is finished, I’m almost through half of the third chart of the Peacock Feather shawl, I’m a skein and a bit into a holiday gift sweater - but not as much as I should (the shawl is due in mid-November, has 7 charts plus, and each pair of rows is two stitches longer than the last two). I have the yarn for the DNA scarf that I’m knitting, along with four sets of the new KnitPicks Harmony wood needles - two sets of DPNs (size 0 and size 2 - the set I’m missing 2 needles from and the set I use the most) and two sets of 16″ circs (size 2 and size4 - both needed for the DNA scarf, though because the points are sharper than my Clover bamboos, I’m currently using the size 4 on the Peacock Feather shawl). So far, I’m *loving* the Harmony needles.. can’t wait to try out the DPNs (and I wonder if I swap out for the bamboo ones I’m using in the second Charade sock if it will mess up my gauge enough to tell..?).
I would go back through and link all that, but.. well, those that are interested also pr’bly have Ravelry by now and you can find the details on my projects in process there. 
I did join a swap - CoffeeSwap III - and I am looking forward to it. If nothing else, it might be a good enough excuse to replace our coffee maker, which died a not-so-glorious death about a week ago. But I’ve already heard from my swap partner and I’m already stewing on stuff to send her!
Work is.. nuts. Non-work “work” is also nuts. It’s time for me to start disentangling myself from things, but the earliest I can disentangle from anything is the end of the calendar year, so .. yeah. Might be kinda quiet-like over this way for a bit.
Coffee Swap Questionnaire
Whee! As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve already been in touch with my pal for the Coffee Swap, but I’ve been terribly remiss in keeping up with the group blog. So I’m a little late getting the questions answered, but I s’pose better late than never!
1. Whole bean or ground? I can go either way. We have a grinder, but usually buy pre-ground for daily stuff since we’re not worried about it “spoiling”.
2. Fully-loaded or decaf? Again, either way. I can’t have caffeine after about noon, but sometimes like a hot cuppa in the afternoons or evening, so we usually have both on hand.
3. Regular or flavored? Um. either.. sensing a trend yet?
4. How do you drink your coffee? Oh, look! One I can answer definitively! Cream (not milk, not powder), no sugar. I do sometimes drink the flavored creamers, but they’re often too sweet for my taste. A well-brewed cup of coffee with just cream is perfect.
5. Favorite coffee ever? Huh. That’s a good question. Jack swears that the coffee from the Olive Garden is the best in the world, and I agree that it’s good, but I’m not sure I’d rave about it quite the way he does. I can describe what I like - not bitter, not dark, flavorful and robust - but I’m not sure I can come up with a specific one to represent.
6. Are you fussy about your coffee or will any old bean do? It depends. *smile* I think it depends on the occasion. For the sort of typical daily morning coffee, just about any old bean will do. But if I’m sitting down to relax with a cuppa, I want it to *taste* good. Rich and .. this is going to seem a bit odd, but nutty is the best I can come up with to describe it, and I’m not talking about nut-flavored coffee. There’s a .. quality to taste that strikes me as nutty; I find it in dark, malty beers that I like, too. Sorry that’s not much help!
7. Favorite treats to have with your coffee? Oohh.. cookies. I actually rather like biscotti, though I really rarely ever get it because it’s so much better fresh than pre-packaged. But I like good butter cookies with coffee, too; something a little rich, but not overly sweet. I’m not a huge fan of chocolate - I like it in some things, but can’t do the death-by-chocolate type desserts - but I tend to enjoy coffee with dessert, particularly if it’s something served ala mode! Oh, and canoli, but I haven’t been able to find good canoli since I lived in upstate NY.. mMm..
8. Anything else about your coffee preferences? I lived in Seattle for several years and learned that I’m not fond of Starbucks and that Seattle’s Best, while tasty, isn’t quite.. right. Tully’s was usually my preferred. Not that that’s likely to be much help, but if you’re familiar with those three, it might! Oh, and Caribou is good, but if I’m going to be in a Caribou, I usually will opt for a froufrou drink (I like the pumpkin spice latte things they have now) since their drip coffee is sort of hit-or-miss for me in terms of how dark/acidic/bitter it is.
9. Yarn/fiber you love? Hrm.. most of them? Actually, I take that back. It depends on what I’m going to make with it. I’m very much a project-knitter - I don’t tend to buy yarn just to have the yarn; I buy yarn for specific projects. For socks and the like, something squishy but that will wear well. For sweaters or other larger garments, something that won’t pill too much. For shawls and lace-type stuff, I can go just about any direction. There’s lots of sock yarns out there that are truly gorgeous, but for which I have a hard time finding a pattern I’d like with the yarn, so there’s that, too. I’m intrigued by silk, but haven’t knit anything with it largely because it tends to run pricey and I’d be afraid whatever it was wouldn’t turn out exactly right. :/
10. Yarn/fiber you hate? Bulky yarns; it hurts my hands to have to manipulate needles that are really large with the weight of something knit in bulky yarn. Most of the novelty yarns or carry-along yarns - I just.. I think it’s that I don’t wear a lot of flashy or extravagent things, so I’m never quite sure what I would do with a novelty yarn in a garment. I also am not fond of the pre-patterned “fake fair isle” type yarns, but I love hand-dyed and how it pools. The only caveat to hand-dyed, is that I’ve learned that I don’t like it when it has too many colors and when the colors pool in pairs so you end up with stripes of two colors alternating. So I guess that means long repeats and/or subtle color shifts.
11. What’s on your needles? Holiday and other gift knitting: a sweater (worsted weight, mostly plain stockinette at the moment); the Peacock Feathers shaw; Charade socks; and once the Charade socks are done, I’ll be casting on for a DNA scarf.
12. Favorite colors? Rich, deep, saturated colors. I’m not sure I can wear a deep orange as a sweater, but I can wear just about anything as socks.
13. Allergies? Nickel. This will only matter if you intend to get me accessories, though!
14. Anything you really love, really don’t like, or just need to get off your chest? Patterns are always neat - especially patterns for sock yarns that either aren’t socks everyone’s making or aren’t socks. I knit in the car on our commute frequently, so socks are a great travel knit, but I get kind of tied up about patterns so suggestions or links or actual patterns would be nifty. I like cables and lace both, even together, and patterns that can hold up to hand-dyed yarns without losing the pattern or making the yarn look like a jumbled mess. Oh, and just in case, I’m verymelm on Ravelry!
I think this was precisely the thing I needed to boost my mood a little this afternoon. *smile* How wonderful!
Red letter day!
Whee! Look what I got today!
Hee hee.. they’re *monkeys*! *GRIN*
And they were born in Oklahoma and Duluth, MN.
And they brought friends - a very fun little retractable sheep tape measure, a nifty little pin cushion thing (is it knit? it’s very kuhl..), and an Oklahoma Sooners t-shirt.
All complements of my most awesome upstream Sockapalooza pal, Rhonda! She and her husband, who is in the Marine Corp, are stationed at Fort Sill, but spent their summer vacation in her home town (gotta love a fellow Minnesotan) of Duluth, where her dad worked at US Steel. I hope she’s not having too warm of a summer back down in Oklahoma and I can’t wait to wear my Monkeys!
And since today is already a red letter day, I figured I’d post a picture of the progress I’ve made this week on my White Lies Designs Easy Lace Jacket:
This is the back, about half finished.
The yarn is Cascade 220 in color 9404. It’s a bit darker than the picture shows, but not a lot. This is a very quick little knit and it’s fairly mindless - I’ve been knitting it mostly while watching movies this week. I might make it through the rest of the back by the end of the weekend.. I have a couple more movies to watch before Jack gets home from his trip!
Quick event recap and VSA redux
Wow. Last week both went way to fast and seems like it lasted a lot longer than just a week.
After finishing the tent repair with mom and dad, we came home to prepare for WW which including making a three entirely new outfits in pseudo-Near Eastern style, one for Jack and two for me. Fortunately, the outfits went together very easily (for those who might understand a bit of SCA jargon, the undertunics are basic t-tunics, just a little longer; the pants are essentially harem pants (yes, I know they’re not entirely appropriate for this, but they are quick and easy and comfy); the coats were just basic t-tunics slit up the front). No, I don’t think there are pictures of either of us in them, but if I find someone who snapped a shot or two, I’ll post them.
We were on site from about noon Wednesday until about 10 Sunday morning. It was rather nice to have a long stretch of time camping and an event where my primary responsibility was to co-coordinate the Artisan’s Row. The Row was a bit larger this year, or at least had more arts represented, which was very neat. In addition to the fiber arts (which are usually well represented) - knitting, spinning, sprang, embroidery, tablet weaving, hand sewing, hand braiding, dyeing - we had a couple wood carvers, a few leather workers, at least one calligrapher, a bowyer, a couple bakers (who treated us to some very tasty flat breads), a brewer demonstrating how to make mead, and even for a short time a musician.
The classes we were able to host (period dyeing, bread making, mead making) seemed to go over well, especially since we didn’t get quite as much posted advertising as I’d planned (my fault entirely - time just seemed to get away from me all week and I didn’t get things where they were needed). As usual, I think we learned some things to do differently next time (whenever that might be), including making sure that folks who aren’t necessarily interested in teaching something on the order of a class know they can come to just hang out and work on their projects on the Row. Additionally, a larger (or maybe just more contiguous) shaded space may be necessary as folks tend to want to congregate in the same space and a single shade fly gets crowded quickly which I think discourages folks from just wandering in to ask about what everyone is working on.
Personally, I wrapped up and plied a decent hank of the Clun Forest lamb’s fleece (not all of it, but maybe a couple ounces worth), but didn’t manage to make it up to Baroness Eithni’s dyepot to try my hand at dyeing it. I also started another pair of toe-up socks with the Yarn Pirate yarn I got from my upstream Gnome Swap pal and I really, really, really love how they’re knitting up. Oh, and I worked a smidge on spinning more of the baby camel/tussah silk top from my SP9 pal. I will snap some pictures in the next few days and post them.
On an unrelated topic, but one that I posted on a couple weeks ago, if you are or know someone who is a prospective/current/former college student, or the parent of a prospective/current/former student, please consider taking a few moments to complete a quick survey about what information you think is most important to assist in the college selection process. Feel free to spread the word if you’re so inclined; the more feedback we get, the more useful we can make the finished product!
Finished Sockapalooza Socks
See, I told you there’d be a post with knitting content today.
I spent the weekend camping in northern IL at an SCA event. This was the first event I’ve attended in quite some time where I had no responsibilities, official or unofficial: I wasn’t running a tourney, I wasn’t teachin any classes, I wasn’t holding “office hours”, nothing. It was glorious. I had two projects I wanted to really put some time in on - the first was to finish my Sockapalooza pal’s socks and the second was to try to finish spinning the Clun Forest lamb’s fleece so I could have it ready to play with some period dyeing that will be happening on Artisan’s Row at another SCA event next week.
While I did succeed in finishing the socks (as a reminder, this is the Baudelaire pattern from Knitty, knit in Wildfoote in the Ragtime colorway on US1 needles):
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.. I’m still plugging away on the Clun Forest fleece. I did get some solid time spinning on Saturday afternoon and evening, though, so it should be at least finished through the singles stage in time to play with some dyeing stuff, which should make plying it sort of neat, too.
Welcome (back)!
Hi there! New digs. No, no particular reason other than that I wanted to try something new. *shrug* The old posts from my Blogger blog have all been transferred, but the links in the sidebar from the ABC-along from last year still link to the Blogger posts. I might fix it; I might not. *shrug*
Moving on, I’m overdue to deliver a picture of the wonderful goodies I received last week from Crystal, my Fiber Swap partner:
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It’s really quite a cache and I can’t wait to free up one of my spindles (or buy more? *grin*) to try out some of this gorgeousness. She sent me a sampler pack of plant fibers, which I am all ga-ga over because I’ve really wanted to try to spin plant fibers, but have been really hesitant to buy a bunch in case I can’t figure out how to make it work. In the little ziploc bag is some cotton (in lint form and some carded), soy silk, and flax - just enough to get a feel for how it all might work without committing to several ounces without trying it first! The heathered brown is alpaca (yes, I know, it’s staying in the plastic to keep it drool-free until I’m ready to spin it up) that Crystal carded herself. The multi-colored bunch is merino - which she *apologized* for because I’ve worked with merino quite a bit before, but my goodness! I work with it because I like it and I’ve never worked with anything so wonderfully & colorfully dyed; I can’t wait to spin this up and see how the colors work in the spinning and how it will turn out when plied. The incredibly soft and luscious blue is Colonial roving. It’s to *die* for it’s so soft. I’ve never worked with Colonial and I’m really, really looking forward to trying this stuff out (hopefully I’ll be able to spin it up into yarn that’s as soft as the roving is)!
This package was perfectly timed, coming on the heels of my recent adventures at Cottage Fibers in Kansas City with Cate & Sara: I worked on spinning up the Clun Forest lambs wool that is currently occupying the drop spindle Cate sent me so that I can free it up to try out something new and it’s been going very well. I’m hoping to get enough to two-ply it into a skein that can be my first dyeing experiment to be used as accent in a pair of socks. I’m also trying to figure out a way to go somewhere to test drive wheels.. I sort of tried one out at Cottage Fibers, but I need to go somewhere when I have more time and a larger variety (though for a smaller shop, Cottage Fibers had lots of wheels!) so I can really get a feel for the differences between wheels.
As I mentioned, I made some decent progress on my Sockapalooza IV pal’s socks at the cabin and have continued to work on them some this weekend. Here they are, as of sometime this afternoon:
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For those who might just be joining in, these are being knit from Brown Sheep’s Wildfoote in the Ragtime colorway (the color on the Brown Sheep website really isn’t accurate for these skeins.. the photo above is color accurate on my monitor) on US1 needles. The pattern is by Cookie A. - Baudelaire from last summer’s Knitty. I think that by more or less random planning I managed to find both yarn and a pattern that is right in line with what my pal said she wanted (which I won’t detail here lest she stumble on over here accidentally!) and even though I feared they might be too small and not stretchy, they fit me pretty well and she has feet that are almost exactly my size.
This post is not what it seems.
We returned from the cabin yesterday. I already miss it - and not just because the breeze off the lake made the mid-80-degrees days not just tolerable but actually quite pleasant. Our house is hot and sticky and even though we get periodic breezes through the upstairs open windows, it’s still too hot and sticky to contemplate knitting anything with wool or spinning anything with any possibility of sticking to moisture in my hands (like the baby camel & silk tends to).
My Fiber Swap box arrived while we were out. It’s quite lovely and has lots of fun things to play with - including samples of cotton and soy silk and flax which I’m unwontedly gleeful about (or will be once it’s not a sauna in my house) - and I will take pictures and post in more breathlessness about it all soon, but in catching up on the headlines from the last several days, I came across an article stating that the number of persons living with HIV/AIDS in a county near us went up in 2006.
Which is a bit of an understatement; the number nearly tripled. (Which, in and of itself, is somewhat mitigated when you realize that the total number of persons living with HIV/AIDS is in the low 20’s, but the rate of increase is still somewhat of a shock.) According to the article, a large portion of the increase is due to an “influx” (can 2-3 people really be considered an “influx”?) of people to the area who were already diagnosed - so it’s not a three-fold increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS infections, but rather an increase in the prevalence of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the region.
And then I read the comments to the article (if you do this, read from the bottom up as the newest comments are added to the top). And as is not all that uncommon when I venture into the comments, I was rather horrified at the ignorance and prejudice displayed therein. But that’s not really my point either; rather, I was reminded by something someone mentioned in passing in one of the comments of a rant I’ve been wanting to write for a few weeks.
It sums up to this, in short: If you trust the security of your blood supply to self-disclosure of potential risk factors, you’re negligently naive. (I warned you this post wasn’t what it seemed.) While the FDA’s policy of “self-deferral” to keep men who have sex with men (MSM) from contributing to the nation’s blood supply *may* reduce the 1 in a million chance of someone contracting HIV from a blood transfusion (which is not insignificant given that there are, in an average year, about 20 million blood transfusions in the US), it relies on the self-identification of MSM as such.
And.. well.. even with the change in terminology and the targeting of MSM who do not identify as gay or bisexual in media campaigns, there is a relatively substantial population of men (apparently especially African American men) on the down low - substantial enough that they are believed to be the primary reason that the incidence of HIV/AIDS among heterosexual women has been on the rise. So.. knowing that, I fail to understand how a policy of self-deferral - which will undoubtedly succeed in keeping a large number of HIV-negative self-identifying MSM from attempting to give blood - is going to do anything to protect the blood supply from the uncounted (but believed to be large) population of MSM who don’t identify as such.
It’s a farce. Rather than admit that the blood supply is at risk of contamination, the FDA would rather reaffirm the stereotype that homosexual and bisexual men constitute the only population with significant enough risk of spreading HIV to warrant the prevention of their contribution to the blood supply - in defiance of the facts that the proportion of new female HIV cases has been steadily rising over the past decade and that 80% of new female HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex. By playing on the fears of the uneducated public, the FDA is knowingly contributing to a false sense of security regarding the US blood supply.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating for the abolition of the maintenance of the US blood supply, or for more stringent restrictions as to who is deemed worthy of contributing; rather I’m arguing for an admission of the actual risk inherent in the system and an abolition of restrictions that are based on fear and prejudice.
